"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
What a remarkable illustration of self-inflicted poverty! It is possible to hold a treasure in your hand but be ignorant of it and go for the wrapping instead. This proximity to truth and distance from its worth is repeated innumerable times in our lives. In Chesterton’s words, we hold the dust and let the gold go free.
– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus among other Gods
Today I went to Confession. I try and go at the start of each month. I don’t know about you, but whenever that time rolls around, I almost always have an interior battle with myself:
“Do I really need to go to Confession? I mean, it wasn’t that long ago since I last went. It’s not like I’ve done anything that bad this last month. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until I’ve got something a bit more substantial to confess? After all, I don’t don’t want to waste the priest’s time with trivialities…”
Of course, sometimes the battle goes in the other direction:
“Ugh…it’s time to go to Confession again already?! I can’t believe how much I’ve messed up in the space of a few weeks. If I go, I’m going to have to re-confess everything from last time, plus a few extras. No, I really can’t go to Confession with my life in such a mess. I should wait until I’ve got things more under control…”
The problem with both of these internal monologues is that they both fail to recognize the grace available to us in the Sacrament of Confession.
As I was driving to the church today, I was reminded of a story told by Ravi Zacharias in Jesus among other gods, a work from which I’ve quoted quite in recent weeks. In the book Ravi tells the story of Andy Harris, a mountaineer who tackled Mount Everest. This adventurer unfortunately stayed too long at the peak and on his descent he started to get short on oxygen. He radioed the base camp to tell them the situation. In response they told him to use the oxygen tanks which he had in his pack. Unfortunately, by this time, the lack of oxygen had started to affect Andy, rendering him confused and disoriented, so much so that he was completely convinced that the tanks he had with him were empty. His friends begged him to use them, but resolute that they would be of no use to him, he refused. He died on the mountain.
What spiritual lesson can we draw from this tragic story? Without sanctifying grace in our lives, our minds and consciences become confused and disoriented. As we fall deeper into sin we only become more befuddled. The longer we remain in our diseased state, the harder it is for us to receive the medicine needed to effect a cure. Left untreated, we even begin to doubt the benefit of the medicine available to us, so much so that we spiritually die, all the while having the remedy within easy reach.
Advent begins today and I would invite you all to begin this time of preparation by going to Confession. In the days leading up to Confession you will no doubt experience something of the battle I described at the beginning of this post. Remain steadfast. There is grace in the Sacrament to help you in your walk with God. Trust in the power of the Sacrament given to us by Christ. Confess fully and truthfully without making excuses, “lest having come to the Physician, you depart unhealed”*. There is no sin you have committed which is too great for God to forgive.
Yesterday I shared a quotation on the subject of suffering from a book I recently finished, Jesus Among Other gods by Ravi Zacharias.
In that post, we saw that even to talk about good and evil we need an objective moral law, something which is rather difficult to explain while denying the existence of an eternal, transcendent God.
Today I’d like to offer a few more quotations from Zacharias’ book. For those of us who are involved in apologetics (which is, of course, every Christian!), he reminds us of a truth which we must keep forever at the front of our mind when speaking about the very difficult subject of pain and suffering.
How does a good God allow so much suffering? Immediately we enter into a very serious dilemma. How do you respond to the intellectual side of the question without losing the existential side of it? How do you answer…[those who are suffering] without drowning it all in philosophy?
– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods
Suffering is not simply a theoretical idea or only a subject for clever philosophical arguments, it is a very real reality with which people must live and it is a topic which is deeply emotionally charged.
Those who feel the pain… often shudder at how theoretical philosophical answers are. We do not like to work through the intellectual side of the question because we do not see where logic and philosophy fit into the problem of pain. If you have just buried a son or a daughter, or have witnessed brutality firsthand, this portion of the argument may bring more anger than comfort. Who wants logic when the heart is broken? Who wants a physiological treatise on the calcium component of the bone when the shoulder has come out of its socket? At such a time we are looking for comfort. We want a painkiller.
– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods
The solution to this problem is to balance delicately the intellectual and the emotional, speaking to both and neglecting neither:
We must not allow the anguish of the heart to bypass the reason of the mind. The explanation [of pain] must meet both the intellectual and the emotion demands of the question. Answering the questions of the mind while ignoring shredded emotions seems heartless. Binding the emotional wounds while ignoring the struggle of the intellect seems mindless.
– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods
When my Dad died earlier this year, I didn’t want a dry philosophy lesson. I wanted people to grieve with me, but who were ready to talk when the time came to grapple intellectually and spiritually with what had happened.
One of the books I read on my sabbatical was Jesus Among Other gods by Ravi Zacharias. The part of the book which I found most engaging was the chapter in which he addresses the problem of evil and suffering. Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting a few short extracts from the book from this section, together with a comment or two.
The “Problem of pain” is an understandably common reason given by Agnostics and Atheists for doubting or even denying the existence of God. However, as Zacharias points out, one can only really talk about the problem of pain if there is a moral law:
…[some] protest that God cannot exist because there is too much evil evident in life… [The Atheist says that] evil exists; therefore the Creator does not…
But here, Christianity provides a counterchallenge… If evil exists, then one must assume that good exists in order to know the difference. If good exists, one must assume that a moral law exists by which to measure good and evil.
– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods
Okay, so to talk about “good” and “evil”, a moral law must exist. So what? How does that point to theism?
But if a moral law exists, must not one posit an ultimate source of moral law, or at least an objective basis for a moral law? By an objective basis, I mean something that is transcendently true at all times, regardless of whether I believe it or not.
– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods
What could possibly be the objective basis of this law? The Theist answers “God”.
At the moment I’m just finishing up “Jesus among other gods” by Ravi Zacharias. In his chapter discussing Jesus’ interaction with Pontius Pilate, Zacharias tells of a really interesting incident in the life of Napoleon which I’d like to share. It’s a little long, but I really do encourage everyone to read it…
